Six Purple Daisies
by Peridot Tears
Summary: They mock her. So Thalia crushes them. She has been carrying this burden for more than a century.


**Six Purple Daisies**

_Disclaimer: Breakaway :3_

...

Thalia remembers the sweet spring air. She remembers the bitter cold.

She wipes her hands and reaches for her bow.

The snow has melted away, and sank into the soil; she sniffs the air, and it is thick with sun and geosmin. The earth has warmed itself again. Thalia likes it; the winter was long, too long—exciting, and yet cold. But the moon is cold, cold as the moon goddess's eyes, and cold as her—so she will miss the winter, the snow, the ice.

But spring has come. The earth thaws itself, and Apollo grins from the molten sun above them. Thalia enjoys herself, then, if only for a while: She runs out of her tent and into the woods, frolicking in her own right, if it can even be described as such. Certainly, she seems to dance, and her silver garb accentuates her freedom. But she is swift and stiff, and every movement is harder than a dancer's. She is graceful, but she is cold, and that is why she loves the spring.

Spring smells like nostalgia. Spring is warm.

Thalia does not venture too far within the woods, but she wishes from peace, though she enjoys the company of the Huntresses—she is one of them, after all. They are sisters, for eternity until it ends. And even then...

The silence is wonderful—she always has silence, be it an excursion into the woods or a sprint after deer. But alone, when it is warm and spring holds the stuffiness of summer, but not quite—she enjoys this. There is nothing but the leaves, and maybe the bird, that call without calling her. Entrancing silence, silencing trance.

A twig snaps.

She does not turn. Merely speaks, so softly—"You came."

Or, at least, he could.

How long has she lived now? She turns around, and sees six daisies sitting innocently at the edge of an acacia. And how did they come to grow there?—they are violet, light violet, or purple. Daisies. Girliest flowers in the world, she once thought. She still thinks, but at this point...she does enjoy this natural beauty. She is older now, but she still does not know whether or not purple daisies are natural. And how old is she now?—she looks to the sun, which merely blinks slowly in reply.

Back to the daisies, which peer so shyly, so sweetly—they belong in this wood.

She reaches for them, cups them, and counts them, again and again. Six. Six. Six. One. Two. Six.

They are so sweet.

They seem so innocent. Perhaps they are faking?—perhaps they have secrets, secrets to hide. They same way she did, and—perhaps this is the reason Artemis let her go. The goddess is old and vigilant; nothing escapes her gaze, which is so farsighted, as much as nearsighted. This is her punishment. Thalia wonders how she has never realized this before. Or why.

The daisies mock her sweetly.

She does not sob—she did not sob when he left, when the goddess looked to her with eyes that penetrated, that told her all she needed to know—that she could hide nothing; the tryst, and the rendezvous—what went on in this wood, behind the Empire State building, across the Hudson, under the flashing lights of Broadway: and then he left her, and she had nothing. Artemis did not need to say it; because it would happen, sooner, or later, and it did.

Thalia grits her teeth.

His touch was wonderful. She stares somberly at the flowers, remembering. She regretted becoming a Huntress. She regretted it, because she was breaking her vow, and she and him were so alike—they chose different paths, and that was her own fault, for losing him. Perhaps it was the loss of Luke, because she had been denied a chance to say goodbye—perhaps she deserved it.

He did not know the Luke that she had known. And that was what happened—the boy's hormones were rumbling at long last, and Thalia—Thalia was mourning in some corner of her heart, or mind, that was iced a little too lightly, less than the rest of it, which was ironic: She should have been more cautious with so frail a spot.

Affairs, and secrets, and rendezvous, and it felt so good, because he was a hero when Luke was supposed to be a hero, her hero—when they were younger, he was the strong one—she, Annabeth, and Luke were all strong, but Luke—he was their father and their brother, and Thalia could equate, but Luke—handsome, strong, independent—strong, strong Luke—

That was how it occurred, was it not? Thalia only realizes now, that two daisies are crushed in her hands; they squeeze purple juice. She chokes on sunshine and geosmin, and in the distance a bird twitters in the spring breeze.

She condemned herself. She saw him one day, she held him because he thinking of Luke, and then he kissed her. And then she kissed back, because she was melting. Luke, Luke was gone. Her partner, the one she drove through wind and snow with, and reveled in the nostalgic spring with. Because he was gone, and because she could not say goodbye. But Annabeth was there. And so was he. What had she done wrong to deserve it? And why did Athena never punish him for something he did, when she was punished for something she never did?

They started to meet. Thalia chokes a little, snaps the stem off another daisy. It was forbidden. And she did it anyway. She liked him. She loved him. He smelled of the sea, and his eyes were endless, like the sea—and green, like the sea off Ellis Island. It was windy off Ellis Island, the green water thrashed there. And his eyes were like that, too. And his hair was black and free, and she thought that that was a good thing Poseidon had wrought. What could she have wrought, had their meetings resulted in offspring?

It was wrong. But she did it anyway, and she blames herself now. Artemis is merciful, to give her time. This is her punishment—a barren, shameful woman, and yet a Huntress, Thalia is haunted by memories of touch and smell and taste, and she is a guilty leader of three holes.

She destroys those daisies, one by one. They squeeze juice like purple honey, so pale and delicate, bleeding in her hands. Her fault. Her fault. Her own fault she feels this way. She chokes them with her bare hands, and longs for his touch, because he was so kind, and let her do whatever, though he was clumsy and sputtered, even when he began to wither. Because he knew what sort of hell she underwent, and was sympathetic.

She brushes her hands and smoothes her lips with her fingers, and looks to the endless sky, imagining a sea, wringing a tempest. Nothing comes, and she whispers his name. And she knows she will never see him again, as much as the sunshine breeze transports her so many years ago; the earth is calm.

Percy Jackson has been dead for a century now, after all.

...

**_PT: Just a heads-up—yes, I aware that PercyThalia is not canon, and that Percabeth is. But really, I see nothing wrong with writing this pairing. This is fanfiction, nee. If you dislike the idea of it, then that's your problem._**

**_Six purple daisies. ...Yeah, I got that out of the Dumpster Dive on Gaia, and my muse sprang forth to sweep away my writers' block. Spring cleaning! So yeah. Because I am a New Yorker—yes, New York city...suburbs—and here it's March and ridiculously warm. Geosmin, by the by, is the chemical that releases that distinct smell you...smell, when spring comes around. So yeah. Here in this story, if you haven't caught on, Thalia has been a Huntress for more than a century, and still feels...wistful, if you will...about having an affair she had with Percy, and how he died from age, and Artemis did nothing about it. By the by, yes, I remember distinctly the green water about Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty; I have visited neither in eleven years._**


End file.
